19 votes

Joshua Tree national park announces closure after trees destroyed amid US government shutdown

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5 comments

  1. [3]
    Gaywallet
    Link
    For fucks sake, who goes to a national park dedicated to a kind of tree in order to destroy that specific kind of tree? Talk about a special kind of asshole...

    For fucks sake, who goes to a national park dedicated to a kind of tree in order to destroy that specific kind of tree? Talk about a special kind of asshole...

    11 votes
    1. [2]
      JuniperMonkeys
      Link Parent
      I used to volunteer with the National Park Service and did a lot of cleanup... our impression, at least for Redwood NP and talking to friends at Yosemite, was that vandaleers were: 25% tourists...

      I used to volunteer with the National Park Service and did a lot of cleanup... our impression, at least for Redwood NP and talking to friends at Yosemite, was that vandaleers were:
      25% tourists who come from places where carving your name on natural sites of incalculable wonder is not taboo for some reason.
      25% teens who think they're being cute. OMG you guys Adria loved Paul in 1998. Spread the word.
      25% jackass old Americans who genuinely don't realize where one does and does not shit (or park, or holler, etc.).
      25% absolutely irredeemable assholes of all ages, color, ethnicities, and creeds. "Huhuhu I want to piss on a tree." "Huhuhu I put garbage in an animal's house." "Huhuhu I did a burnout."

      Talking to friends who are either still volunteering or got paid jobs, it sounds like it might be 40-10-10-40 now. One good thing I'll say about Instagram is that it seems to have served as a corrective measure wrt. America's youth writing on things, at least the subset that goes out of their way to visit NPs. And the clueless jackasses have migrated to the intentional asshole group, because that's where we are as a society.

      6 votes
      1. NaraVara
        Link Parent
        It's 2 reasons: 1.) You're often dealing with people who are, at most, one or two generations removed from living in mud houses by open sewers. They just haven't been socialized to expect things...

        25% tourists who come from places where carving your name on natural sites of incalculable wonder is not taboo for some reason.

        It's 2 reasons:

        1.) You're often dealing with people who are, at most, one or two generations removed from living in mud houses by open sewers. They just haven't been socialized to expect things to be pristine and unmarred.

        2.) Another result of item 1 is that most of these countries have very little state capacity or rule of law. Not only have they not been socialized to expect things to be clean, they have no real sense of how their behavior can have any meaningful effect in the aggregate so there is no sense that they individually have any responsibility for stewardship over these things.

        1 vote
  2. PopeRigby
    Link
    I just went there a year ago. It was so awesome. Fuck. I hate people sometimes.

    I just went there a year ago. It was so awesome. Fuck. I hate people sometimes.

    2 votes
  3. Thunder-ten-tronckh
    Link
    So... Who knows?

    But a different spokesman for the National Parks Service, Mike Litterst, subsequently told the Times that the park may not close after all if staff are able to complete cleanup work before Thursday.

    So... Who knows?

    1 vote